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Displaced East Timorese children queue to get immunization at a refugee camp in Dili, East Timor.
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20 June 2006
On World Refugee Day, United States Leads World in Darfur Aid, June 20, 2006 (Refugee assistance promotes freedom, justice, human dignity, official says)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – The United States leads all international donors in supporting organizations working to ease the suffering of Sudanese refugees, according to Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey in a World Refugee Day speech June 20.
More than 200,000 refugees have fled persecution and violence in the embattled Darfur region of Sudan to refugee camps in eastern Chad where U.N. organizations and nongovernmental entities are providing assistance.
In a Washington speech, Sauerbrey said the United States has contributed $115 million to the international aid effort.
In her prepared remarks, Sauerbrey said the U.S. refugee assistance program represents a defense of human dignity, and is part of the nation’s humanitarian imperative.
That imperative also has serious national security implications in today’s world when repressive regimes and failed states create refugees, she said.
“As we assist victims of persecution and conflict, we transform societies and uphold the first pillar of President Bush’s National Security Strategy: promoting freedom, justice and human dignity,” she said.
Humanitarian work has become more difficult and dangerous in an era of heightened global security, however, and the United States is challenged to balance its two goals of deterring terrorist activity and supporting humanitarian work, Sauerbrey said.
Post-September 11 changes in U.S. immigration laws have had the unintended effect of barring some victims of conflict and oppression from resettlement in the United States because they had a history of involvement in resistance activities, or were coerced to provide “material support” – as the law reads – to their persecutors.
Because of that legal stumbling block, the United States will not meet its target of admitting 54,000 refugees for resettlement in 2006, Sauerbrey said, even while officials attempt to resolve the issue justly.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently waived the security restrictions, allowing U.S. resettlement for several thousand members of the Karen, a Burmese ethnic minority living in a camp in Thailand. (See related article.)
Some refugees who will be admitted for resettlement in the United States this year represent a long-awaited solution to decades of statelessness. A State Department official announced June 19 that several thousand Meskhetian Turks will be sponsored for resettlement, more than a half a century after their ancestors were deported from their South Georgia homeland by Josef Stalin. (See related article.)
About 2.6 million refugees have gained permission to resettle in the United States in the last 30 years, according to State Department statistics. The United States is the leading international donor to refugee assistance, and sponsors more refugees for resettlement than any other nation.
The full text of Sauerbrey’s prepared remarks is available on the State Department Web site.
For ongoing coverage of refugee issues, see Humanitarian Assistance and Refugees.
